Volume 30 (2011) - Cincinnati Romance Review

174
GALADRIEL MEHERA GERARDO
of Mexico’s population was considered “black,” although a significant portion of the
mixed-race population likely had some African heritage (Meyer 164-6).
Prejudice against people of African descent had a long history in Mexico and
Latin America in general, but gained new strength in the late 19 th century. In the period
between 1880 and 1930 an export dominated economy emerged and prevailed
throughout Latin America. The regimes that corresponded with the lucrative export
economies were responsive to the small population that controlled export money, and
no longer had to give lip service to the concerns of common people, especially common
people of color, in the way they had during the independence period (Andrews 118).
Just as the Latin American elite exported raw materials en masse during this period, it
also imported ideas from the North Atlantic countries that justified the subjugation of
indigenous and African peoples in new ways. The pseudo-scientific racism in vogue in
the United States and Europe came to dominate Latin American thought and policy in
the second half of the 19 th century. In Mexico positivism, the belief “societies were
evolving toward a final stage marked by a scientific outlook” (Trillo 1164), became
particularly influential, and paired with pre-existing negative views of indigenous people
and people of African descent served to further marginalize these two groups.
In the late 19 th century Mexican intellectuals enthusiastically responded to the
vogue of scientific racism in Europe and the United States. This treatise, most
associated with Herbert Spencer and Social Darwinism, held that Anglo-Saxons
dominated the globe, enjoyed the greatest prosperity, and had reached the highest level
of technological, scientific, artistic, and philosophical “progress” because they were
racially superior. Their very success and global domination was viewed as proof of their
biologically determined supremacy. Poorer nations, colonial possessions, and
“undeveloped” countries were depicted as weak as a result of their inferior racial
makeup. Within this framework a complex racial hierarchy existed with northern and
western Europeans at the top, followed by southern and eastern Europeans, West
Asians, East and Southeast Asians, Native Americans, and people of African descent
(although the exact order of the non-European groups sometimes changed depending
on the so-called philosopher/scientist.)
Late 19 th century Mexican intellectuals jealously regarded the seemingly
homogenous populations of the United States and Europe. They associated their
whiteness with modernity, and modernity with economic success and political power,
and aspired to imitate the “modernization” and “progress” of these countries by
whitening their own populations. Whitening and by extension modernizing their
countries required bringing in more Europeans through immigration and diluting any
pre-existing indigenous and African blood. Intellectuals across Latin America adopted
Social Darwinism and scientific racism as weapons to fight the lagging progress of their
nations (Andrews 118). In Mexico these intellectuals were known as científicos, and many
were employed by the dictator Porfirio Diaz. Diaz’s científicos blamed Mexico’s problems
on the supposed inferiority of indigenous people (Dawson 330; Weise 753). Their ideas
Cincinnati Romance Review 30 (Winter 2011): 172-183.